What does chile have that pájaro doesn’t? Semantic productivity analysis of both alburemas

Abstract

The alburemas chile and pájaro show productivity differences in an albur, a type of word play in Mexican Spanish. Such differences rely on their core semantic features, the triggering-verbs repertoire, the possible combination, and the range of configurations to express sexual allusions. This paper aims to explain this differing productivity from a cognitive-semantics focus, as well as demonstrate the underlying regularity. The findings reveal that chile is more productive than pájaro due to the weighting of the semantic features. The systematization of the albur occurs in the interaction dominion, which allows three basic, conceptual schemes: affected, affecter, and theme.